About the Author
Anna Anthropy is a game designer, author, and educator. She currently teaches game design as DePaul University's Game Designer in Residence. She is the author of many games about cats, and she lives in Chicago with a little black cat named Encyclopedia Frown.
Works by Anna Anthropy
Rise of the Videogame Zinesters: How Freaks, Normals, Amateurs, Artists, Dreamers, Drop-outs, Queers, Housewives, and People Like You Are Taking Back an Art Form (2012) 100 copies, 4 reviews
A Game Design Vocabulary: Exploring the Foundational Principles Behind Good Game Design (2014) 24 copies
Game Design Vocabulary, A: Exploring the Foundational Principles Behind Good Game Design (2014) 4 copies
D/sphoria 1 copy
Game Poems 1 copy
Associated Works
Videogames for Humans: Twine Authors in Conversation (2015) — Playthrough; Game — 40 copies, 1 review
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- New York, New York, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- New York, USA
Members
Reviews
ZZT by Anna Anthropy
Anna Anthropy delves into what makes ZZT--as she herself admits, "an obsolete game-making tool"--special. She interviews members of the ZZT community from the nineties, and discusses the whole experience, from playing the original game, to building new levels, to discussing it on Prodigy and IRC.
Anthropy admires the creativity of the fans who made new worlds for the game with its limited tools:
Some created games far outside the original parameters:
Anthropy also muses on the elements of game design as they relate to ZZT in particular and other games in general.
Throughout, Anthropy relates her experience with ZZT to her experience growing up trans:
On the whole, this is an excellent book for anyone who wants a view on this particular niche of nineties gaming or computer culture generally. show less
Anthropy admires the creativity of the fans who made new worlds for the game with its limited tools:
Sweeney built these commands, these codewords, into ZZT so he could test out his worlds moreshow more
easily. He built them for utility. He built them as shortcuts. Authors built whole worlds around them.
Some created games far outside the original parameters:
“Zem! was kind of part of a larger movement of what the community termed ‘engine games,’ making the player control a different avatar through an additional control panel,” Zem! creator John D. Moore tells me. “I got a severe joy out of twisting ZZT to do something that it wasn’t really intended to do, and even something no one had quite thought to do before. I knew I wasn’t making a perfect iteration of Lemmings in ZZT, but I was pretty thrilled to be adapting it to an altogether different medium with concessions to what that system’s limitations were, and further, exploring new territory made possible by those concessions.”
Anthropy also muses on the elements of game design as they relate to ZZT in particular and other games in general.
Throughout, Anthropy relates her experience with ZZT to her experience growing up trans:
I spent my childhood dressing up in ZZT—trying on feminine identities to see how they felt. I was reading, too—fantasy worlds like Sword and Sorceress and The Enchanted Forest Chronicles.
On the whole, this is an excellent book for anyone who wants a view on this particular niche of nineties gaming or computer culture generally. show less
Rise of the Videogame Zinesters: How Freaks, Normals, Amateurs, Artists, Dreamers, Drop-outs, Queers, Housewives, and People Like You Are Taking Back an Art Form by Anna Anthropy
Great! It's an energetic call to get out there and make games, and a pretty good argument that the indie game scene of 10s could learn a thing or two from the zine scene of the 90s. Also a pretty quick read. And one that'll make you want to immediately go make a game or two. Which, I suppose, is the point.
In the vein of Boss Fight Books Volume 1:[b:EarthBound|19386071|EarthBound (Boss Fight Books, #1)|Ken Baumann|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386814390s/19386071.jpg|27457432], but is written in a tighter fashion and also has good insight into the creative process behind a lot of personal game development.
Whereas the first book was a beautifully sprawling mess of biography and description, this one is tighter. This befits the narrative architecture of each game.
[a:Anna Anthropy|5181019|Anna show more Anthropy|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1328825784p2/5181019.jpg] has shown a gift for embedding the autobiographical (esp. pertaining to her personal journey) into her work, and this book is no exception. It really captures the joy of what happens when a well-crafted (accidentally or purposefully) game engine allows someone who isn't a professional game developer (yet) to delve into the act of creation with no real clue to what they are doing. show less
Whereas the first book was a beautifully sprawling mess of biography and description, this one is tighter. This befits the narrative architecture of each game.
[a:Anna Anthropy|5181019|Anna show more Anthropy|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1328825784p2/5181019.jpg] has shown a gift for embedding the autobiographical (esp. pertaining to her personal journey) into her work, and this book is no exception. It really captures the joy of what happens when a well-crafted (accidentally or purposefully) game engine allows someone who isn't a professional game developer (yet) to delve into the act of creation with no real clue to what they are doing. show less
Rise of the Videogame Zinesters: How Freaks, Normals, Amateurs, Artists, Dreamers, Drop-outs, Queers, Housewives, and People Like You Are Taking Back an Art Form by Anna Anthropy
Short ode to the potentials of single-authored videogames made using readily available software, often for free or donation-funded distribution. I have to admit that it’s not a genre that I’ve ever been fannish about or see myself getting fannish about, but I recognize the emotions and commitments, and if videogames are a major method of communication then absolutely we need not just the blockbusters but everything else.
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 15
- Also by
- 2
- Members
- 233
- Popularity
- #96,931
- Rating
- 4.1
- Reviews
- 7
- ISBNs
- 19